When I try to increase weight of glyphs that I just created with a script – simple copy/scale uppercase letters to get smallcaps – all fields in Tuner are inactive but Slant field. I have 3 masters and this occurs in Regular and Bold. Light can be tuned correctly.
Previously, in this situation, I got an alert from Tuner about layers related stuff, but I don’t remember what it was. I just clicked it to never show up again. New glyphs have only master layers.
And now I’ve noticed that when I make a copy of a master, and then set that copy as a master – Tuner works again.
Just tried to reproduce this problem but Glyphs already crashed when I used the Python script.
Just wondering what you are trying to achieve with this script that you cannot do with the bulit-in functions of Glyphs plus RMX?
In order to create small caps, I would duplicate the capitals using Glyphs’ Cmd+D, then rename them via Cmd+Shift+F, Find (.*)(.001), Replace \L\1.sc using Regex. Next, I’d use the RMX Scaler, not the RMX Tuner, to scale the small caps. This is exactly what it is made for. One nice thing about the RMX Scaler is that you can easily update the small caps from the capitals later by using “generate from source”. The glyphs even remember how they were generated.
I have updated the script. Sorry for that. Now it works. Just select a glyph, run the script, choose any Preset and hit the button. A new glyph should be generated. Try to run RMX Tuner on that glyph – all fields are inactive except Slant.
Of course when working with small caps, the approach You described is better, but:
RMX Scaler doesn’t decompose nested components – I have to manually adjust components’ positions which is time consuming. Option to completely decompose would be great.
RMX Scaler often crashes when “generate from Source” is selected by default and when I try to clear stored values. I wrote a post about this RMX Scaler crashes – Clear stored values (I can send a file)
Scaling glyphs for superscript gives bad results when dealing with Bold masters – that is why I decided to copy glyphs and then adjust their weight with Tuner when it is necessary.
Thanks for your detailed explanations. That script is nice! Offering basic presets is a good idea, like an educational feature.
Regarding your specific points:
In the latest version, the RMX Scaler tries to switch components based on the suffix. For example, if you scale the adieresis.sc then the A component is switched to a.sc and the dieresis.case component is switched to dieresis.sc – if these glyphs are present in the font. If no corresponding suffixed glyphs are found, and no outlines are in the glyph then the whole glyph is decomposed. Does this behaviour make sense to you?
I fixed a umber of crashes in the last beta versions. If you still experience crashes with the curent version then please let me know.
This is strange. You mean the combination of scaling and RMX Tuner gives better results than the RMX Scaler? It should be the same. Of course, the Tuner allows you to adjust the individual glyphs differently (but so does the Scaler if you use it one-by-one).
I just scale base letters and then use Make Component Glyph to generate sc diacritics. So I don’t really need this…
But what I really need is an option to completely decompose components with Scaler (I have mentioned this several times already). When I try to make a superscript glyph it looks like this:
This is hsuperior made from H with components. Quite messy as You see. Previously I was adding base letters as components, decomposing them, and then running Scaler. It was time consuming. That’s why I decided to do it with a script.
For creating superiors and other small glyphs, this workflow gives better results. In my case of course.
Left asuperior is just scaled Bold a. For this weight I don’t need to change its weight at all. But when I use Scaler to scale it, I have to reduce weight and it finally looks like a glyph at the right. It is malformed.
So I decided to just copy glyphs with a script and then add some weight with Tuner to Light and Regular weights.
In Regular the difference is not huge, but still noticeable:
Left asuperior is created by scaling with a script and then weight is increased with Tuner. Right scaled with Scaler by 60% and weight is decreased slightly.
If you only select onle glyph then the dialog will show a text fiels that allows you to specify the source glyph name: generate from [ ]
If you select multiple glyphs then RMX tries to guess the source by removing the suffix if there is any. So, the dialog just shows “generate from source” and you cannot edit it (this would be too complicated as a UI). RMX also knows about lowercased small caps. For example, if you select a.sc, b.sc and c.sc then RMX auto-detects the sources as A, B and C. If you want to manually tweak a specific source (for example, in my JAF Facit the j.sc is based on J.alt, not J) then you can do so by selecting only that glyph.
The glyphs remember their source (auto-detected as well as manuallt entered) as well as the scaling values. This means you can quickly re-generate all RMXed derived glyphs by selecting them all and runing the RMX Scaler.
I’m trying the above (and watched the tutorial), and I believe I have all the .sc glyphs and components, but it’s still decomposing both the A and it’s mark for the diacritics. Any thoughts?
In the current version of RMX, components are no longer “switched”. When generating from source, all components are decomposed; when scaling in-place, all components are preserved.
Accented small caps, or other glyphs containing RMXed glyphs as components, should be set up using the standard mechanisms provided by Glyphs. Anchors are correctly adopted and “scaled” from the source glyph.
